rankandfile Posted March 27, 2006 Posted March 27, 2006 I stayed up until 3am this morning and finally got my first site installed! Just when I thought that I was on the green and ready to putt for birdie, I realized that I still have a ways to go in getting it to look custom. My site has the default sitename/catalog/ page and I am in the process of figuring out how to customize it with contributions. My only problem is that there are so many contributions (and derivations) to choose from that I don't know where to begin. Are there some "must have" contributions that anyone recommends? Are there any that I should stay away from? Do you just pick a base contribution and implement it, or do you try to constantly update it with the latest and greatest versions or patches? I am sure that you have to look at each contribution on an individual basis to see if it will work for your individual needs. I also noticed that a lot of the contribution developers recommend back ups as well as having a test, or development, store site. I am assuming that they make edits to this test site first and then upload it to the server so that they don't screw up the live site. Does anyone have any advice on how best to do this?
Guest Posted March 27, 2006 Posted March 27, 2006 I've just now started the process of DE-'stockifying' my site look. Besides the back-end stuff, there are several visual contributions that I'm using so far: InfoBox Flickr Badge Printable Catalog Square Corners InfoBox Drop Shadow 1.1 Enhanced Categories with Dropdown box InfoBox Login Box As far as the 'version' of the contribution, I get the latest when I find it, and as long as it's working, I don't feel a need to constantly update. That's just TOO much work. I'm FAR from a PHP coder, but I have enough scripting experience that I can make some other changes on my own. I make backups of my entire site (backing up the entire WWW root via FTP) on an almost daily basis. As far as 'test' site, my host allows me to install up to 5 instances of osCommerce, so if I really want to see something different, I'll install a new instance, install the contribution, check it out, and go from there. If it's not what I want, I can wipe the entire thing.
rankandfile Posted March 27, 2006 Author Posted March 27, 2006 I make backups of my entire site (backing up the entire WWW root via FTP) on an almost daily basis. As far as 'test' site, my host allows me to install up to 5 instances of osCommerce, so if I really want to see something different, I'll install a new instance, install the contribution, check it out, and go from there. If it's not what I want, I can wipe the entire thing. Thanks Kenia. About the backups, do you have a complete backup of the www root locally or on the web server? In describing the 5 instances that your host provides, it sounds like you have the backup on the server. So let's say that Instance #1 is the live site and Instance #2 is the draft. Do you test the contributions on Instance #2 (draft), and if they work, replace Instance #1 with #2...or do you just modify the hyperlinks to point to Instance #2 rather than #1? I hope I made sense. I just want to be sure that I have a sound update/backup plan in place before I begin tinkering with the contributions. By the way, who's your host? I am using Site5. I am pleased with their support and service up to this point and they allow up to 5 separate domains for the price of one.
rankandfile Posted March 28, 2006 Author Posted March 28, 2006 Kenia, I just checked out your site and think it looks really nice. How did you modify the colors and text and such? I also like your gift certificate idea. Are gift certificates something that you set up custom or is there a contribution you might recommend? How does osCommerce know to void transactions where one tries to use a gift certificate to buy more gift certificates?
Guest Posted March 28, 2006 Posted March 28, 2006 :blush: I'm not Kenia. I'm Daniel, Co-Owner. She's the freethinker with the ideas. I'm the practical one :lol: The backups I keep are complete FTP backups of the WWW folder. Every day, I'm in there making changes, tweaking things. When I'm done for the day, I copy everything down to my PC via FTP and compress it into a file. EX, todays file is www_03272006.rar and it's about 35MB. Seems like I"m going through a lot, but it has helped me on more than one occasion when I needed to revert back to something. I don't keep backups on the server. If something were to happen to it, all would be lost and that's unacceptable. My 'test installs' are just that. Fresh, new installs of osCommerce that I do specifically to test something. Small things, mostly. Our host is Netfirms.com. I've got 2 other sites running with them and theyve got pretty good deals and extras. Very minimal downtime. As for the colors and text, most of that is in the stylesheet.css file. Kenia likes the mahogany brown motif because it matches the text on our logo, so I found the closest thing in HEX and replaced the infobox bar with it. Pretty simple. The gift certificates right now are a manual process. We keep a separate database of each cert. When they're issued/purchased, they're given a unique number that the customer can either use with an order or give to a friend. EX: You buy a gift cert from us for $25. We send you an email confirmation with the unique cert number, (###999999). We store that cert number and the balance in a separate database. You can use that number to purchase items, or give that number as a gift to someone else and they can use it by telling us the cert number in the order comments textbox. It's kinda clunky, and lucky for us only local people that we know have ordered gift certs. There is a contribution called credit class & gift voucher that's supposed to implement the same basic gift certificate principles, but I haven't installed it yet. I'll get around to more sophisticated contributions when I get a bit more confidence in PHP coding.
rankandfile Posted March 28, 2006 Author Posted March 28, 2006 Daniel, Sorry about the name confusion! That's some good advice on backing things up and will have to keep that in mind when I start going live. As for the certificates, is your store able to read the unique ID that is created with the separate, custom database? I.e., can your store system understand that when someone enters in certificate code x-y-z that it is only valid for products a, b, but not c (certificates). This might be a useful marketing tool (aside from a straight-up sale) for categories of items that you are trying to get rid of more quickly. EX - You allow someone to purchase a $50 gift certificate for only $45 (equivalent to a 10% discount), but the certificate can only be used towards bath accessories and not soaps. The persons giving and receiving the certificates get a discount and you get a chance to move some inventory :-).
Wendy James Posted March 28, 2006 Posted March 28, 2006 There is a gif certificate contribution. : ) http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,282 but it does take some work to install Wendy James Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
rankandfile Posted March 28, 2006 Author Posted March 28, 2006 There is a gif certificate contribution. : )http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,282 but it does take some work to install Thanks Wendy. I'll make it a point to check out that contribution as well.
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